Hammonds crash on Sunday night

If you like facts and figures.

Woss wrong wiv English, ven?

So what's involved in a sports science degree, presumably you've done one so can tell us?

And all the other soft options, like law, medicine, computer science, english, management studies, social work, psychology?

We'll all be murdered in our beds!

Are you a daily mail reader by any chance?

Media studies can give you cancer and affect house prices!

See below regarding media studies.

There's 4 there, LOL.

I'm working with a girl tomorrow with a degree in MS, that's why the example came to mind. She's been trying hard to get a job now for 3 or 4 years that will allow here to put her knowledge and training to good use. Guess what - she's a stewardess and serves tea and coffee all day. What a complete nonsense IMO.

I know a couple of lads who did sports science degrees - it was apparently "a laff" - but not much else, that of course is just anecdotal.

Which contribute to the national bottom line, are "productive"

Of those, only medicine is productive IMHO. Comp sci. grads are useless bastards from bitter personal experience.

Steve

Ditto computer science mostly, quite easy for me at least.

Depends on what value you put on subjects like history and art, some won't put any value on anything that they themselves don't have any interest in.

Charmed I'm sure, nothing like a sweeping generalisation... Comp sci grads if nothing else will help pay the pensions of moaning old codgers or propping up people who are a drain on society (which according to the treasury is on average anyone earning less than £25K a year or £18K a year if healthy, single and not claiming any benefits like child allowance).

I'd put a value, of sorts, on history and art, but I don't think there's much future in it as a career, an interest sure, but how many people can make a career out of it ? What is the point of it exactly ?

The Chinese are turning out 350,000 engineering graduates a year, and that's rising.

Only if the comp sci grads learn how to think outside the little boxes they inhabited at university.

I've employed enough of them to form an opinion. Didn't realise you were one though - personal apologies, you must be the exception that proves the rule, but, like I said, from my direct experience, the ones I knew were not that good with computers. Oh, they thought they were, but hit them with a real world, hard real time problem and they were clueless.

Steve

Not big-name newspaper-worthy artists, but there's shitloads of illustrators and designers in just about every field who have often benefitted from an art degree or similar, it's one of those wide-ranging subjects that many people think of as just being about painting pretty pictures, I've seen some welding done on art courses that would put most mechanics to shame ;-)

I thought you said you would put a value on it? If money is all that marks someone's worth then no, not much use if they can't earn much.

They're churning out bazillions of everything and everyone, on account of there being bazillions of them. We're not a big nation, there are more Moslems in India than there are people in Britain, and India is a primarily Hindu nation for example. We can't churn out more of anyone than nations that vastly exceed our population.

When people come straight from university, or from school, they aren't ready for work, it's not a vocational way of learning. I've seen comp sci grads who deservedly got good degrees who couldn't programme for example, their skills lay elsewhere in the wide-ranging field that is computing.

That's just people for you. I was interviewing people for security consultant roles some time ago, I interviewed about 10 people before we got someone I knew to join the company. Of those 10 who turned up, only one knew what I'd regard as the basics, and we couldn't employ him due to security clearance issues. My friend didn't know the basics but I knew he had the kind of mind that would pick them up effortlessly, which he did. People who can pick stuff up like that are quite rare so I'm not surprised you can't find someone.

Quite possibly, but then like so many penalty clauses in contracts, I'll bet most gets negotiated away over time.

Richard

IN BLACK AND WHITE

57,500 students sat media, film or TV studies GCSE in 2006. This is 25.9 per cent more than in 2005 and represents 1 per cent of all GCSEs taken this year.

25.9 per cent jump in media studies entries in the past year.

30,964 students sat media, film or TV studies A level in 2006. This represents 3.8 per cent of all A levels taken; 54 per cent of students were girls and 46 per cent boys. 10,002 applicants accepted for mass communication and documentation graduate courses by higher education institutions in 2005. 250 per cent increase in the number of people taking media studies at A level over the past 10 years.

so, yes, it's time to wring your hands and wail ;-) Unfortunately I don't have the time to search the BBC site, but an article a while back gave figures for the collapse in Maths and Engineering numbers, even the so-called computer science courses are under subscribed.

Indeed we are. No smiley.

Richard

Shouldn't that be :

"Woss wrong wiv English, ven? Innit"

Richard

Just have a look at any University's site offering the course. Whether one think's that worth a degree (bearing in mind a degree was/is supposed to indicate a canditate can think/work at a given level in a general area, and is *not* a training course for a particular job).

may be hard work, but the rewards are great

Now that is a *proper* degree - bloody hard work and very, very important to society.

since the early 90's when employers started setting the sylabus this has turned into little more than a Microsoft training course - the equiventent of a HND. I have a Comp. Sci degree that included all the maths, real-time control (maths in disguise), hardware, complier design, operating system design (not just Windows or Unix) etc etc. The intake that followed us was doing Windows programing as a 4th year subject for god's sake - something we would have expected to pick up ourselves in our spare time!

OK if you want to be a teacher or a librarian, but there's only do many required.....,

ha ha ha ha ha ha! Those that can, do. Leadership is something one either has or hasn't. Those with the ability to manage can be trained to improve, those without the ability can't. See Officer Selection courses for RAF, Navy, Army. One of life's great comedies is watching a recent graduate, or even better and MBA, make a complete arese of themselves as their paper world fails to fit into reality.

oh please!!! The perfect candidates for doing social work are out there without a degree - they have a lifetime of experience having brought up families and run things in general. You cannot learn such skills from a book. I've seen social workers having rings run round them by those who they are supposed to be helping because they are far brighter!

As the sign over the bog-roll holder in the toilets at Sussex Uni said "Please Take One".

Rather silly, I'd have expected better.

Richard

No you couldn't - you'd do a Batchelor (or Master) of Education, taking the options (as everyone did in some area, the ex being Special Needs) to specialise in Physical Education.

That's *not* the same a Sports Science, which is not a teaching degree and is not taught in teacher taining based Universities.

Richard

I'm not sure - but that makes you sound like a Pom. ;-)

In article , beamendsltd writes

It's ironic that those of us who did a real media course, (Evesham A-course, in 1978), were put through the mill. The lecturers considered it the equivalent of a first-year electrical/electronics engineering degree in about six weeks (the rest of the course was largely practical).

The BBC only considered it basic training - nothing pretentious. The pass mark however was 90% on each end-of-week test, and you were allowed to fail only once. There were others waiting for your place if you couldn't hack it.

It's true that the same level of training probably isn't needed these days, but the competition is just as fierce. How could the industry possibly absorb that many graduates annually? If it can't, why pretend that such vocational training is worthwhile? It's just seductive lies, for which our children will be paying for decades.

Truly, New Labour talketh bollocks yet couldn't find them with a map.

No smiley from me either.

Regards,

Simonm.

Well I'm a Computer Science graduate, and I'm with Steve. Most Comp.Sci. graduates are doing jobs that a keen 18 year old could do, and making a big deal out of it. There are some doing good work, but the most of the people who really gained my respect actually came from mathemetics backgrounds, and the some on the best coders from "craft" courses, i.e. apprenteships. I should point out that I was freelance for a few years, so I have much wider experience of different organisations and types of work than most - the average contract being 3 or 6 months.

I wear a flame proof suit permenentky these days!

Richard

Eh? 3.8% of A levels are in media studies, which is just a small part of a person's education (they do 5 A levels IIRC), and you think this proves the point that "all we get these days are media studies students"?

Ah yes! Every course says that! We had a lodger who did Electrical and Electronic Engineering. He was Hong Kong Chinese, and knowing I have a OND in E&EE used to ask for help with lanuguage issues. I tossed a coin when doing the Uni appliation for doing either E&EE or Comp. Sci. I *bloody* glad I did Comp. Sci. though. Despite my OND (with Level 4 HND Units included) which should have covered pretty much the first year of E&EE, this guy was doing serious work from day 1. My adimiration for him is total, not least as his English was not that good.

Richard

see the bit at the en.

Richard